June 2008

The Independent catches up with Katy Chevigny, Executive Director of Arts Engine, Inc., the nonprofit arm behind the festival, and Gina Telaroli of Meerkat Media Collective, one of the seven collaborators behind Every Third Bite (watch the film), another of this year’s official selections, to discuss artistic collaboration, trends from this year’s festival, and how the Internet is changing the way we make and view film.

Jason Rosette made two films in the U.S.—Bookwars and Susan Hero—before moving to Southeast Asia. His original plan was to travel a bit and learn how to teach English as a second language. But on a stopover in Cambodia, Rosette found himself infatuated with the country and its people. And since the once-troubled nation lost a generation of artists and journalists, he also saw an opportunity and even a responsibility to put his media-making skills to good use. So he organized a film festival and started a production company that works for a number of NGOs. He chronicles his work in this first journal entry for The Independent.

Though this year's Tribeca Film Festival was dominated by Scandanavian vampires, a decidely American documentary about, yes, a Transylvanian immigrant from Brooklyn also drew crowds. The film is Judd Ehrlich's Run for Your Life (view the trailer), a biography of Fred Lebow, the founder of the New York City Marathon. He was also an impresario, a canny politician, a PR machine, a womanizer, a visionary, a hot head, and—in Ehrlich's words—"a survivor in every sense of the word." The challenge in making the film, then, was not digging up material, but sorting through a mountain of interviews and other footage. Ehrlich recently talked about the film with The Independent's Mike Hofman.

To make Muskrat Lovely (view the trailer), her first full-length documentary, Amy Nicholson packed a small crew into a car and drove from New York City to rural Maryland. Her subjects were the women participating in the 50th anniversary muskrat-skinning competition, which they refer to as a pageant. She had only one camera and under three weeks to get all of the footage she needed. Here, she explains how she pulled it off. Also, check out the Doc Doctor's previous Anatomy columns.